Some used to say, in old times; and they may say again--This world, so full of pain and death, is a very ill-made world. We will not believe that it was made by the good God. It must have been made by some evil being, or at least by some stupid and clumsy being--the Demiurgus, they called him--or the world-maker--some inferior God, whom the good God would conquer and depose, and so do away with pain, and misery, and death. A pardonable mistake: but, as we are bound to believe, a mistake nevertheless. Others, again, good Christians and good men likewise, have invented another answer to the mystery--like that which Milton gives in his 'Paradise Lost.' They have said--Before Adam fell there was no pain or death in the world. It was only after Adam's fall that the animals began to destroy and devour each other. Ever since then there has been a curse on the earth, and this is one of the fruits thereof. Now I say distinctly, as I have said elsewhere, that we are not bound to believe this or anything like it. The book of Genesis does not say that the animals began to devour each other at Adam's fall. It does not even say that the ground is cursed for man's sake now, much less the animals. For we read in Genesis ix. 21--"And the Lord said, I will not any more curse the ground for man's sake." Neither do the Psalmists and Prophets give the least hint of any such doctrine. Surely, if we found it anywhere, we should find it in this very 104th Psalm, and somewhere near the very verse which I have taken for my text. But this Psalm gives no hint of it. So far from saying that God has cursed His own works, or looks on them as cursed: it says--"The Lord shall rejoice in His works." Others will tell us that St Paul has said so, where he says that "by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin." But I must very humbly, but very firmly, demur to that. St Paul shews that when he speaks of the world he means the world of men; for he goes on to say, "And so death passed upon all men, in that all have sinned." By mentioning men, he excludes the animals; he excludes all who have not sinned: according to a sound rule of logic which lawyers know well. What St Paul meant, I believe, is most probably this: that Adam, by sinning, lost his heavenly birthright; and put on the carnal and fleshly likeness of the animals, instead of the likeness of God in which he was created; and therefore, sowing to the flesh, of the flesh reaped corruption; and became subject to death even as the dumb beasts are.